Features

A check on the pages in Wikipedia for Diana, Princess of Wales suggests that there are at least 30 books about the lady, and the long article there has about 500 footnotes. That alleged number of books may be a low number of the actual publications, given foreign interest. These bare statistics do n

Benjamin Bestgen has penned a guide to wine labels for SLN readers this festive season. Last year I wrote about wine and the law for SLN. With the festive season in full swing, many of you will be going wine shopping. However, the sheer amount of options can overwhelm consumers. Therefore, shop

Maureen Matheson may not pour a great pint, but the skills she learned while working behind the bar in Glasgow’s Bon Accord have stood her in good stead for her life as a lawyer. “You learn so much about customer service,” she says of the bar work she did to fund her way through he

Applications for permission to appeal (PTA) to the Upper Tribunal for Scotland (UTS) frequently raise questions about the boundary between fact and law and the scope of the arguability test. These issues appear across Scotland’s tribunal system where appeals proceed only on points of law. Ahsa

The Great War had an unprecedented and long-lasting impact on crime in Scotland. From the first year of the war prison committals were at their lowest levels since the 1870s, and remained there until after armistice in 1918. Even amongst those citizens not in the armed forces imprisonment also fell

The Scottish Law Agents’ Society has reacted with dismay to the decision by the Scottish Solicitors’ Discipline Tribunal to reduce the standard of proof it applies from beyond reasonable doubt to a balance of probabilities. Andrew Stevenson, its secretary, explains why. This decision amo

David Dewar was born in 1836 in Perthshire, the son of a farmer. At the age of fourteen years he entered the office of Mr Barty, the procurator-fiscal at Dunblane. After a legal apprenticeship he was engaged as a clerk in the office of the procurator-fiscal at Airdrie and at Fort William. It is not

The die was cast for Mary Queen of Scots on May 16th 1568 when she crossed the Solway into England a few days after the Battle of Langside. Some sought to dissuade her. Archbishop Hamilton even seized the reins of her horse and begged her not to trust herself to England. Mary would have none of it,

The last revolution in legal education was not digital but electrical. For a time, the lecture halls of Edinburgh and Glasgow stood half-in, half-out of the new century: stone stairwells lit by bare bulbs, while seminar rooms still relied on the yellow comfort of gaslight. No one doubted that electr

Irrespective of one’s politics, it is irrefutable that John Maclean was one of the great men of politics making history in early twentieth-century Red Clydeside. So why is he so sparingly discussed in this book whose title purports to be a new biography? The early chapters rattle along recount

David J Black is underwhelmed by the US investor’s plans for a pod hotel in an elegant Edinburgh crescent. A mere few months have passed since Keir Starmer, chancellor Rachel Reeves, and trade minister Peter Kyle victoriously announced that they had secured a magnificent £150 billion dea

As a solicitor who has specialised in non-surgical beauty and hairdressing claims for more than 13 years, I have witnessed the evolving landscape of cosmetic treatments in Scotland, writes Jennifer Wallace. Throughout my experience representing clients, it became increasingly evident that there was

When Fiona Pask took on the head of Scotland role at Shakespeare Martineau earlier this year it looked like the firm was finally going to be able to pursue the kind of growth it had planned since launching in Edinburgh in 2020. The Scottish government’s long-awaited Regulation of Legal Service

Jonny Seddon shares some insight from the recent Interlaw Global Meeting in Edinburgh, which sparked discussion around how developers and investors are navigating uncertainty in the Scottish real estate market. After years of political shifts, rising costs and funding pressures, Scotland’s rea

Europe has entered the next phase of the AI–copyright debate, writes Corsino San Miguel. On 11 November, the 42nd Civil Chamber of the Munich Regional Court delivered the first European judgment to hold an AI developer directly liable for both training and outputs involving copyrighted works.